The director-general of the Angolan Debt Management Unit said on Monday that the debt with China, Angola’s main creditor, has been on a downward trajectory and could be completely wiped out by 2028.
Dorivaldo Teixeira, who was presenting the Angolan state’s Annual Debt Plan for 2025 in Luanda today, gave a historical overview of the public debt, noting that the main creditor is China representing (with debt collateralised to oil and not collateralised to oil) around $14.15 billion (€13.45 million).
Regarding the domestic debt, he said that it was approximately the same size, at $14 billion (€13 million), with the United Kingdom being one of the main creditors.
Regarding the debt with China, which reached more than $20 billion (€19 billion), he said it was now “more manageable. ” The debt collateralised by oil caused the most concern.
As part of this debt, Angola supplies China with oil shipments that are monetised at market prices, and the funds from this financing are used both to service the debt and for the state’s financial activities.
“In March 2024, we managed to reach an agreement with one of the largest creditors that allowed us to slightly change how this agreement worked, allowing Angola to release extraordinary resources from its escrow accounts,” he said.
“In other words, these are extra resources that are going to come in and also allow us to leverage our activity,” said the director-general of the Angolan Debt Management Unit (UGD).
Dorivaldo Teixeira highlighted the downward trajectory of the debt stock with China, which reached a level of around $23 billion (€21.8 billion) in 2017 and has been reducing since.
“If we continue to be able to service this debt to the extent that we have been servicing it, we could probably have it completely reorganised by 2028,” he stressed.
In terms of debt servicing, in 2022, right after the debt suspension process, it went from $14 billion to $16 billion (€15.2 billion), a situation which, he explained, “meant that Angola had a lot of pressure on debt servicing during these three years”.
He also noted a significant improvement in debt, from $72 billion (€68.4 billion) to around $60 billion (€57 billion). He explained that part of this was due to a reduction in internal and external debt and the other to exchange rate variations, with more debt not indexed to the exchange rate.
“The conditions may be being created so that, in the medium term, with the stabilisation of macroeconomic conditions, domestic bonds can effectively serve as a reference for financing the economy,” in other words, creating the conditions for us to finance ourselves more in kwanzas, said the head of the UGD.
For the treasury, the aim is to go to the international market and be able to issue $1.5 million. “We’re also counting on funding from the World Bank for around $500 million, from the African Bank for around $164 million and the rest from commercial financing,” added Dorivaldo Teixeira.
Lusa
